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OTTAWA — A member of the federal advisory committee on endangered species said Tuesday that good news, not bad, lies behind the Harper government decision to reduce protection of the North Pacific humpback whale.

Environmental groups and the federal New Democratic Party seized Tuesday on the decision as evidence the government is pandering to industry and especially the companies behind two major oilsands pipelines to the B.C. coast.

But Andrew Trites, director of marine mammal research at the University of B.C.’s Fisheries Centre, said the public should be pleased because it reflects his committee’s research showing the humpback population is growing strongly.

Trites is a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, known more popularly as COSEWIC. It is an independent scientific body that since 1977 has advised — and sometimes clashed with — successive federal governments.

Trites is a member and former chairman of the subcommittee of marine mammal experts from across Canada. That’s the group whose research refuted previous research that was behind the 2005 federal declaration that the humpback is threatened.

The government is now removing that designation and accompanying special protection, and listing humpback is a “species of special concern.”

“The research is telling us the humpback whale population is increasing. We’re finding them all over the B.C. coastline,” Trites said.

The NDP accused the Harper government Tuesday of putting politics before science.

“The Conservatives are bending over backwards to please their friends in the oil industry and pave the way for Northern Gateway,” said Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley).

Trites said he understands the paranoia about the Harper government’s agenda, and acknowledged that Ottawa has sometimes dragged its feet on his committee’s recommendations on other species that were perceived as problematic for industry.

“ I completely understand, but (on the other hand) I feel that unfortunately often marine mammals are used as pawns or poster children in these exercises,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of right things to see them (the humpback) recover and it’s being spun as though they’re in grave risk, and that’s not the case.”

He said the committee is fully capable of re-visiting the status of the humpback if future research determines that the humpback is in any danger.

“Humpbacks seem to be one of the species that have adapted well to living with people,” he noted.

Of far greater concern, he said, is the officially “endangered” North Pacific Right Whale.

“There have been two sightings this year after 60 years of not seeing any. Losing one from a ship strike would be catastrophic.”

Trites acknowledged that some scientists objected to the humpbacks’ reclassification from threatened. Their concern centred around speculation that there are two populations of North Pacific humpback, one near the southern end of Vancouver Island, the majority of which spend their winters off the Mexican coast, and a population further north that mostly winters near Hawaii.

These scientists believe the southern humpback is still threatened, though there wasn’t sufficient evidence before the committee to justify maintaining their “threatened” status, he said.

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